


Third Time's the Charm

by texadian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Molly is obtuse, Molly journals, Sherlock Being an Idiot, barely T
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 21:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5556788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/texadian/pseuds/texadian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's worst enemy this time is his own nerves. In moving forward with Molly, he stumbles a few times, leaving her confused and overwhelmed. </p>
<p>3rd person Sherlock/Molly's journals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Time's the Charm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sherlollymouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlollymouse/gifts).



> This is my Secret Santa gift for sherlollymouse on tumblr. I hope you enjoy it and can squeeze it in between SBBC fics. ~Tex (allaboardtheships)

He’d seen the way she acted around others before. The friendly hugs and forehead kisses. He didn’t want that to be him. He didn’t want to fall into the pattern.

He’d put much thought and preparation into it, but yet… nothing went down as it should’ve.

 

_Molly_

_December 10 th, 2:30 pm_

_St. Barts, Office_

_How could I be so stupid? So incredibly stupid?_

 

_He was just standing there, hovering like always, and I had to turn around and push my face into his. Well, he must have been leaning over a bit at least. He is a fair amount taller than me. But still. He was probably leaning down to see what I was up to. And what do I do? Whip around far too quickly, shoving my cheek at his lips._

_Way to go Molly. Way to go. He probably won’t even speak to you now, never mind look your way. Stay back everyone or Molly will invade your personal space! Urgh._

 

“How’d it go?” John asked him that night.

If the dragging of his feet and overall moodiness didn’t say it all, Sherlock added in a short quip for good measure. “Horrible.”

John didn’t look up from laptop, just sighed.

“It couldn’t have gone that bad. I haven’t heard any complaints from Mary nor Molly, as of yet.”  
Sherlock stopped mid stroll, and paused in front of John’s chair, shooting him a snobbish glare. “Well, yes. I suppose a great deal of more horrible things could have happened. But a failure is still a failure.”

“No bell curve here?” John asked with an inkling of a smile.

“A solid D,” he spat back.

John shrugged. “Room for improvement then… So what actually happened.”

“I kissed her cheek.”

“Did you mean to do that?”

Sherlock shook his head slowly, mouthing a _no._

“Mm,” John hummed in return.

“What’s your next move, then?”

“Letting that never happen again,” Sherlock replied coarsely, crossing over to the kitchen for some food. “We both know that got me nowhere before.”

He opened the fridge, shook a few things around including two empty cartons of milk and a mouldy pasta salad, and then closed it with a thud.

“Mind not breaking anything while you’re all hormonal?”

Sherlock chuckled. “Funny.”

“I’m serious though.” He paused. “About Molly. Too many cheek kisses and she’ll think you’re going soft.”

“Soft?” Sherlock nearing choked out.

“Yeah.”

“I deal with homicide victims and serial killers. I’m not soft.”

“Going soft,” John corrected.

“How would I go about stopping that? If I indeed were…”

“Man up, already. Just go for it.”

“Man up?” Sherlock rolled his eyes.

John narrowed his brows. “What?”

“ Well…‘Man’ does include both you and my brother, so I think not. I’ll stick with the second. Just going for it, as you say.”

 

_Molly_

_December 11 th, 7:30 pm_

_Home_

_Today was strange —possibly stranger than the one before. But it had nothing to do with the set of suicidal twins I had to finish paper work on._

_It was, as you may guess, Sherlock._

_It wouldn’t have been crazy to assume that he might’ve avoided the morgue or St. Barts altogether, after what happened yesterday. But no, he stopped by for at least an hour this afternoon. He did a great deal of hovering as per usual. But never, not once, did he ask any questions about my current cases. I had a set of conjoined twins on the table, but all he did was roam around, all brooding —not dark or manly brooding, but like a frustrated teenage boy._

_I tried to keep my distance, let him know that I wasn’t going to pull anything like the accidental cheek kiss from the other day, but it didn’t’ work. I stepped one way; he followed. I went clockwise around the autopsy table and he walked counter._

_And then, just when I couldn’t take the silence any longer, he apologized. Sherlock apologized to me! Mumbled something about timing and bad aim… I really have no idea what that was about. I wanted to ask, but he left soon after and sometimes with Sherlock, you just don’t want to know._

 

“I can’t believe you’re taking this case,” John whined, dragging his feet behind him.

Sherlock opened up the door to a cab he’d flagged down and slid inside. “Just get in.”

John hesitated on the curb as Sherlock rattled off an address to the cabbie. When it looked as if he would leave without him, John ducked into the car and it drove away.

It took half the journey for John to realize their final destination and by that time, the doctor was pretty sure he’d caught onto why his friend had taken such odd case.

“You said this was a case from Mycroft, correct?” John nudged Sherlock who’d been transfixed on the seat in front of him, lost in thought,

“Mm,” he hummed.

“Really?”

“Course.”

“Okay… That sounds fake, but okay.”

“Here.” Sherlock held out his phone, showing a recent text exchange with his brother. “Happy?”

John barely had enough time to catch any of the words. It proved nothing.

“So why is it we’re going to Barts for your brother’s case?”

“There’s evidence there. Why else?” Sherlock tempted him.

John shook his head with a smile, pleased to have a front row to seat to whatever was about to go down.

 

Inside, sure enough, there’d been a tread sample, just sent over to the lab.

“Afternoon, Molly,” Sherlock greeted, yelling over to where the pathologist had just emerged from the mass spec room.

Molly smiled nervously at Sherlock, before shooting a worried glance to John when he’d turned away.

“I’m almost done running the sample,” Molly commented while continuing her own work for the day. “Your brother said the identification of this sample was very pressing for the case.”

“Oh, yes. Very pressing indeed.” Sherlock feigned urgency, rushing over to the computer where the results were coming in.

John followed shortly after, but hung back against the counter, trying to hold in a grin over Sherlock’s poor attempt at acting.

“What was it?” Molly hovered on the periphery, craning her neck to see the results for herself.

The consulting detective on the other hand did, well, not a whole lot of either of those. He stood in place, holding a hand over his mouth and chin in thought. Whether it was to hide his true emotions or not, John could not tell, but if anything was certain, the man was speechless.

“3,5-dimethyloctane and 2,2,4-Trimethylpentane,” Molly murmured to herself.

She walked up beside Sherlock and motioned towards the screen to takeover. Sherlock shrugged and she took this as a yes, hovering over the chemical’s peaks herself.

“These are from the treads?” she asked, not certain she had the clearance to advise on the case.

Sherlock watched her out of the corner of his eye, nodding along slowly.

“Wait! Hold on.” Molly dropped the mouse from her hand, letting it clatter against the dark slab counter, and disappeared into her office.

John took the opportunity to gauge his friend’s reaction, wondering what exactly he was planning to do now that he had thoroughly convinced Molly that she was helping on an actual case.

He went to speak up, when she walked back out of the office with a folder in one hand a shit-eating grin on her face. She waited until she was back over at the computer before opening the file and flipping to a middle page in some lengthy report.

“These hydrocarbons,” she began, tracing her fingers over the pages. “They’re all chemicals found in jet fuels. Now these aren’t exactly the same as the unidentified ones on your tread samples, but I’m sure —I’m positive— that this sample in from an airport.”

Sherlock’s expression didn’t change for a moment. He stood there, dark eyes staring down at Molly until either something had clicked or he’d finally got up the courage to do what he did next.

He took the folder from Molly, skimming it far too quickly to actually get a good look, then discarded it on the counter beside them.

“Brilliant,” he whispered, so quiet John could only see his lips moving. “Brilliant,” he said again, louder.

His mouth was closing, lips pursed to utter the word again, when he stopped. With his face frozen, stuck in the mould of a phrase he’d just begun, he abandoned all regards of finishing it once more and instead leaned over, face quickly descending upon the pathologist.

Molly’s eyes, wide open and continuing to expand, followed his trajectory. This time, it wasn’t his lips that were about to make contact with her cheeks, but his hands. They cupped each side —long fingers wrapping underneath her jaw and leading it upward.

She tried to breath his name, a half-assed attempt at stopping his pursuit, but it was too late. Both too far gone. The definite taste of one another against their lips and soon after, their tongues. He arched overtop of her, moving his hands to her back, and caught his fingers on the belt loop of her lab coat.

She smelled of warmth, if a feeling could have a smell. He wanted to bury himself inside of it, cocooned. He wondered briefly how he’d mistaken her mouth for small and cursed his former comments. Was she wearing make up now? He’d been so preoccupied with his plan that the observation eluded him. Eye make up, possibly. No lipstick —gloss most likely —a vague hint of maraschino cherries left on her lips.

From somewhere behind them, John coughed and Molly’s centrifuge machine beeped.

He hadn’t realized how forceful the kiss had become in such a short amount of time. So messy. He pulled away and wiped at his mouth —another tactic to cover his emotions and gauge hers first. Unfortunately, she hadn’t quite recovered yet, lost in space, staring blankly at a spot beyond him.

_Brilliant,_ he thought to himself, before turning quickly and exiting the room.

Molly looked over to John for any explanation of his friend’s actions, but John merely shrugged.

“I guess he was really excited,” he offered without much insistence.

Molly nodded, still shocked.

“You were an outlet for that excitement.”

Molly’s face soured. John cleared his throat awkwardly.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to,” he supplied again, before nearly running from the room.

 

 

_Molly_

_December 13 th, 12:30 am_

_Home_

_So I have been really trying to sleep, I promise. But I can’t. In the past, I probably would have rushed home to write what happened today down in my journal, but I honestly have not succeeded in forming coherent sentences on the matter. It very much leaves me flabbergasted._

_See? It leaves me saying things like flabbergasted._

_I guess I can start with the facts._

_Sherlock kissed me. On accident I think._

_He ran a test. I offered him a suggestion. His mind was doing that buffering thing —the little pinwheel in his brain spinning— and then he muttered brilliant and kissed me… And then proceeded to leave quickly thereafter._

_But, you see, that part is easy to me. The rest —the context of it all— does not._

_First he kisses my cheek, which I have decided he did, not me. And now today he full on, for at least eight steamboats, kisses me. We’re talking the French kind too. And that would seem explainable at that, except the end. The part where he fled like he’d just ran over a small puppy._

_I don’t know what to make of it and I’m afraid to ask._

_Maybe I’ll call in sick if I’m not asleep by 2._

 

“Where are you going now?” John asked his friend for the third time that morning.

Sherlock had been out and back in several times now, obviously not having much of a follow-up for his plan.

“I don’t know. But I do need to go somewhere, at the very least.”

“You need to talk to Molly.”

“Why? Has she said something?” Sherlock dropped his coat on the back of the coach and sat across from his friend.

“No. But you did kiss her yesterday.”

“And?”

“And you left immediately after.”

“Yes, well…” Sherlock trailed off.

“She probably thinks you made a mistake. What, with the horrified look on your face after.”

“It wasn’t horrible. I quite enjoyed it actually. She’s—”

“I really don’t need to know mate, okay? I’m just saying, you looked very frightened after.” John held in a snicker.

“So she’s mad at me?”

John stretched his hands over the sides of his face and looked ahead with tired eyes. Sherlock had insisted on starting their next case the night before and John had had no time to return home and sleep.

“Just talk to her.”

Sherlock nodded, recognizing John’s suggestion, then paced the room deliberating over his next move.

“I’ll call,” he finally decided with a shrug.

Her name was saved under his most dialled numbers on the secondary screen, but Sherlock stalled, scrolling through his contacts to delay the conversation.

It rang once. Then twice. And a third time, before going to voicemail.

“What happened?” John asked. “Did you wimp out.”

His friend looked appalled. “No I did not wimp out. It went to voicemail,” he said in a barely audible voice.

“Then ring her again and leave a message.”

Sherlock looked as if he hadn’t considered the option and was most upset that it existed.

“Fine.”

It rang once. Then twice. But then a voice picked up.

“Hello?”

 

_Molly_

_December 13 th, 10:30 pm_

_Home, bedroom_

_The kiss wasn’t an accident._

_He convinced me so._

_Many times over._


End file.
